"In terms of identity, we are searching for something authentic, and at the same time, open and interchangeable," Nat Meade told us in his 2017 feature with the magazine. "It is so tenuous and elusive. I want my guys to be difficult to pin down." Five years on, it feels like Meade's "guys" are even more authentic and representitive of our times, both exhausted and elusive and feeling the tension of the modern world. But they are poetic and beautiful lonely souls, and in his new solo show, Nothing, Happens For A Reason, Meade looks at himself and creates playful, poignant, sometimes sad and often delightful paintings. 

As the gallery notes, "Meade describes his recent work as feeling ‘sadder and more inward.’ In his role as a father, he has found his most poignant struggle in an awareness that being a good father is the most important thing in his life, but knowing that the way his kids see him does not reflect how overwhelmed he feels in the role." When we ask our friends and the people close to us how they are feeling these days, it often turns to being overwhelmed, things being sped too fast, too many roles to take on. And yet in all these uncertain feelings, Meade has made work that is absolutely beautiful to behold. —Evan Pricco